Mistress

Chapter 88

I open my eyes. I don’t know how long I was out. I raise my head and think, This is what mass chaos looks like.

People are scattering. Everyone is shouting. Sirens are blaring. Multiple helicopters are overhead now. Fighter jets are patrolling the skies. Fire and rescue trucks are arriving.

Bodies lie everywhere. I’m too far away from the epicenter to have a good sense of the number of casualties, but some of the bodies, thank God, are moving. Others are prone.

The air is thick with the smell of fire, gasoline, smoke. Of death.

I get to my feet on wobbly legs. I’m in one piece. I shake my head and shards of glass fall out of my hair. The street is littered with broken glass.

I start toward the wreckage, to offer any help I could possibly provide, but police officers are already pushing people away from the scene and setting up blockades.

There’s nothing I can do. Not here, anyway.

I look up at the sky, at the cloud of black smoke hovering above the spot where the Russians’ SUV once sat. The thugs inside that vehicle were blown to pieces, no doubt. And that, clearly, was the point of this overkill. This wasn’t just a suicide, a cyanide pill crushed between the teeth to avoid interrogation by the enemy. No, these assassins didn’t just want to avoid capture.

They wanted to avoid identification.

The Russians, and Alexander Kutuzov, have covered their tracks well.